Here are some amateurish baguettes/ficelles I baked yesterday. The dough was quite high in hydration (close to 80%), and I neglected to strengthen it enough. Therefore, I could not properly shape and score the baguettes/ficelles. For flour I used Alta Artisan Bread Flour (malted) by Honeyville. Good day!

So my question is, can I produce anything close to this in my home oven? Any word of wisdom will do. I've read your posts on pizza, so now perhaps a thread on bread. Marty

Dear Marty, you asked, "Can I produce anything close to this in my home oven?" I would assume it depends on how good your home oven is. I have not yet tried baking baguettes in a home oven, so I am not sure. But, as a matter of opinion, I can tell you that you need "steam" inside the oven in order to procure great results. The way I generate steam in my wood-fired oven is by spraying water inside the chamber. Member Wheelman (Bill) has been making beautiful baguettes in his home gas oven. He injects steam inside his oven by using a pressure cooker. Some home bakers place inside their ovens a metal tray containing water.

Similar to Neapolitan pizza, good baguette needs the right dough and skillful hands, in addition to a suitable oven.

I have been thinking about buying an electric bread oven by Rofco (http://rofco.be/ovens_EN.html). They are built in Belgium. I have heard good reviews on the product. They are sold at the following website:

Looks amazing Omid, what was the oven temperature and how long was the bake time?

Thank you! For the baguettes/ficelles, the floor temperature was about 470 F, and they took about 23 to 26 minutes to bake. I used my propane torch to heat up the oven. For the bread rolls, I used the residual heat from the night before when I fired up my oven, using oak, to bake Neapolitan pizzas. The floor temp was about 450 F, and it took about 24 minutes for the bread rolls (made out of leftover pizza dough balls from the day before) to bake. Good weekend!

Marty, I agree with Omid that steam really helps.An while not baguettes, for a nice boule / round loaf, I recommend checking out Ken Forkish's Flour Water Salt Yeast book.In it, he details how you can make great bread using a cast iron Dutch oven for part of the bake cycle, which allows the bread to steam itself.In this thread you can see the finished product.http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=31808.0

Beautiful baguettes Omid. Are you just doing stretch and folds to achieve that open crumb?

Nate

Dear Nate, thanks for your compliment. I think that almost every phase of baguette making, including stretch-&-folds, effect the crumb structure. In addition, I believe the "final shaping", which needs deft hands, is quite decisive in achieving the open crumb. In my opinion, since stretch-&-fold builds dough strength, it can attenuate the generation of open crumb if it is carried out excessively. Good day!

I truly enjoyed using this flour over King Arthur's all purpose and bread flours that are commonly available at supermarkets. I, also, liked the flour better than the one I used in my last post (i.e., Alta Artisan Bread Flour by Honeyville). In my assessment, Golden Haven seems to be a weaker flour than the aforementioned flours. Here are some pictures. Good day!

Would you be so kind as to share the workflow recipe so I can attempt?

Dear Stefano, so far I have only scratched the surface in my attempts to make baguettes. I have a lot to learn. As far as I know, there are different ways of making baguettes. Some years ago, a Frenchman told me that baguettes generally fall into two broad categories: "classic baguettes" and "street baguettes". The proponents of the former treat baguettes formally/formulaically or according to certain conventions while the proponents of the latter treat baguettes with much less formalities or conventions, concentrating mainly on texture and flavor rather than being overly concerned with the right geometric configuration of the bread and et cetera.

Very, very briefly put, my workflow, if I do a straight dough and use fresh baker’s yeast, begins with a twenty-minute autolyse (flour and water only, no salt and yeast added at this point). My hydration is usually 70% or higher, depending on the type of flour and other factors.

After the autolyse, I add fresh baker’s yeast (thoroughly crushed and rubbed into a small amount of flour) and salt (non-hydrated) to the autolyzed dough and begin mixing. (In passing, I should mention that it is common to use poolish or levain in making baguettes, but here I am just doing a straight dough.) Next, I let the dough undergo fermentation 7-10 hours at room temperature. Then, I do the "pre-shaping" by cutting the dough into 180-200 gram portions. My wood-fired oven at home is very small, so I am not able to make full size baguettes, about 400 grams each. After a bench rest of 30-60 minutes at room temperature, I do the "final shaping" (a very critical stage of making baguettes), and let the baguette-shaped doughs rest on a dusted couche at room temperature for about 30-60 minutes. At last, I score the baguettes and bake them—with steam—for about 18 to 24 minutes at about 450 to 470 F on the oven floor.

Of course, there is lot more to making baguettes than the brief description above. Below are some videos that very briefly summarize the process. Being an amateur baguetteer, I do not know how good the videos are. Good luck!

In case you are interested in making ethnic flat breads, which are crusty and very much taste like baguettes, you may like to check out my thread at The Fresh Loaf:

Here are some mini sourdough baguettes I baked yesterday. Unfortunately, they got over-baked by about 6 minutes. For flour, I used Giusto's "Artisan Bread Flour" (unbleached and malted) at about 72% hydration. Good day!

Here are some amateurish mini-baguettes I baked yesterday. For flour, I used white Khorasan flour (Kamut®), hydrated at 80%. Khorasan wheat (named after the Khorasan province in Iran, where the wheat is speculated to have originated from) is an ancient grain, which is said to be sweeter and nuttier (indeed!) in flavor than the modern wheat.

At 80% hydration, the dough (which was short-mixed, using no poolish or any other types of preferments) required only two stretch-&-folds throughout the initial warm fermentation, which took about 12 hours. Khorasan flour naturally has high protein content (reportedly higher than the modern wheat); hence, it can absorb a lot of hydration. Nonetheless, the generated gluten network is not as strong. It can be, in my experience, fragile. However, once the dough is acidified enough, because of the fermentative reactions, the dough becomes progressively easier to work with. Because of the weak gluten, it is difficult to achieve open crumb. Yet, the crumb is very soft, moist, and buttery. Below are some pictures. Good day!